Today’s our one-year Cali anniversary! Yes, it was exactly one year ago today that we left snowy, cold Oregon for warm, sunny California. Well, it’s usually warm here. I knew the move would be rough, though I had no idea it’d nearly kill us. Even so, we have survived! In one year we’ve gone further than we got in the 3 that we lived in Oregon. We’ve got new computers, a camera, an iPod, desks and more. We didn’t even have a kitchen set in Oregon! An old, peeling, and beat-up table and lawn chair hardly count as a dinette of any kind.

If someone had told us where we’d be a few months after leaving Oregon, I’d have wanted to drop dead on the spot. Had they told us where we’d be a year later, I’d have laughed!

I’m helping Tom help himself with not eating himself sick. Fortunately, he’s never eaten to the point of puking, but he upsets his belly at times on his days off by eating too much crap. So he’s doing what I try to do and space out his food so he eats more often but less at a time.

We decided to take a chance at upgrading our internet speed to the second-highest speed out of four, and we’re now twice as fast! In a month or so, we’ll step it up another notch.

I won another writing contest! Just some bullshit essay about how duct tape saved the day. I made up some line about being scared of mice and jamming the hole with duct tape where the sink pipes go through to keep them out, and it got me a Tee and a roll of duct tape in Orange Blast. Cool, huh?

I don’t know if I’ll get it, since I’m obviously not getting the popcorn samples I also won, nor the perfume, nor the Karmaloop shopping spree, but I won a $50 Amex card in an instant the other day as well.

Since Jesse hasn’t shown up, we’re assuming he got a construction job. With that kind of thing, you just gotta go on whatever jobs they give you, whenever they give them to you.

Anyway, other than just lounging around doing our usual things these last few days like watching movies, programming, fine-tuning the new computers, writing, enjoying the radio, entering sweeps, playing around in Kiwiland, and running a few errands, life has been good. My sleep is still cursed (even at night now), but life is good. We tried Rally’s, a grocery store Tom ran out to today, and I love their Chinese buffet. I got chicken fried rice, and sometime I’ll load up on a little of everything except for chow mien and egg rolls. It’s not a good place for regular grocery shopping, though, as opposed to Walmart, cuz it’s so expensive.

We canceled Rhapsody and got commercial-free, unlimited song-skipping for just $35 a year with my old Yahoo radio station. The only thing I can’t do now is downloading, but with my recorder, that’s ok.

If things could stay running as smoothly as they have for the rest of our lives, even if this place is too small and too old, that’d be just fine with me! God, I hope we never have any disasters half as bad as last year! I know one thing for sure and that’s that I’m never going to stop praying for things to be ok no matter how mad I may get at God for the unfairness in this world that has touched myself and others.

Of course, staying away from the off-brands helps keep us safer, too. Jews may not be as hated here as in Arizona, but no matter where you are, the off-brand prevails.

Tom and I both agree that while I may be best as a psychic at influencing and with dream premonitions, there definitely does seem to be an uncanny coincidence with “jinx-writing.” So many things I’ve written in stories, letters or journals have come true. Therefore, after I finally get around to finishing the stories I’m working on now, I should definitely try to incorporate more of what I’d like to happen to us for real into the story somehow.

Tonight I’ll be redeeming points for lip gloss on KB.

Not at all surprisingly, Jesse hasn’t done the roof. So he’ll wait till Sunday, assuming Monday is when he returns to work.

Yesterday was another miserable day for me with allergies. I mean I was totally miserable! I was practically bedridden, too. Every time I’d move I’d get hit with a sneezing fit. So we got some nasal spray which I’m going to take once a day and hope for the best. Naturally, all the damn congestion that goes with the allergies has my ear even more fucked up.

Jessie sent me an attachment you’re supposed to send to at least two friends within two hours to get your wish granted in 6 months, and one friend to get it granted in a year. I forwarded it to Tom and Satish (I couldn’t think of anyone else), and Tom forwarded it to me. We wished for money, of course! Jessie said she wasn’t sure if she believed in it, but didn’t see how the hell it could hurt to tell her friend she was thinking of her. I don’t know if I believe in it either, but we’ll find out in time.

Our Macs are pretty much all set up now. Just a few more things need to be changed or added. I sent Mary a picture sheet. If it makes it in to her as she says it will, I’ll enclose a sheet with each letter which I’ll send every week or so.

The built-in webcam is cool.

Anyway, it fucking figures Jesse hasn’t done the roof yet. My schedule’s pushing later into the morning, too. He’s obviously the type that puts things off till the last minute. He wouldn’t have waited till the day we moved in to check the heater and cooler if he wasn’t. He might come on Thursday cuz that’s trash day, but I think he’ll come on Friday or maybe even over the weekend.

Moo also reviewed Nocturnal Obsession and I’m glad she likes my stories so much. :)

Read Moo’s final review of Heart of the Forest, which she just finished. Moo’s her SN (screen name), so that’s why I call her Moo. Haven’t heard from the one reading my biography. Guess she either got bored with it or is busy.

Yesterday I was just miserable. Non-stop allergies all day long. Every time I’d move I’d be hit with sneezing fits, and my nose was stopped up all day, too.

Tom slaved his ass off yesterday getting Windows installed on the new Mac I’m using because I hated the Mac operating system (OSX), browser (Safari), and especially its pitiful version of Robo. I don’t know why people were saying it was so good when it wouldn’t even fill out the entire form.

Won a couple of packs of gum, got the rest of the stuff I ordered from Ashton-Drake, and a few samples. There were tampons, Dove lotion, and Kashi granola which was so boring I sicced it on the rats.

It’s hot, but not as smoky lately.

We’re just kicking back setting up the new Macs. It’s a bitch having to configure shit, install programs, etc., but worth it. The 22” monitor is perfect for a desktop. Tom’s $900 Mac is refurbished and has a wired keyboard and mouse, but the $600 printer and my $1200 Mac are wireless. So were my keyboard and mouse, except that insanely enough, my keyboard didn’t include a number pad, so I’m using the wireless keyboard I’ve been using all along and a different wireless mouse. The wireless mouse I had been using can’t be used with Macs, but that’s ok, cuz I still need one for the laptop. It’s awesome! I have the mouse I operate the Mac with by the keyboard on the keyboard tray, then I put the laptop’s mouse above it and I can skip songs on my radio that play on my laptop without having to get up.

Today’s been both a fun and annoying day. We got the Macs and printer, as well as one of the clear round crystals I liked the first time I saw it, then shortly after we returned, who shows up? Well, Jesse, of course! Jesse, Jesse, Jesse! He had his kid with him, too. They came ATVing down to get the metal tin that’s going on the roof. I guess they have to cut it to size. He also cut up part of the tree that went down.

Despite the fact that we were both up, that was still kind of rude of him not to call first and ask if he could shoot down and grab the shit. I guess instead of Tom, me, and tons of barking, or Tom, me, and the car stereos or neighbors’ wild kids, it’s now Tom, me and Jesse, Jesse, Jesse. Oh, to go more than two weeks without him coming down here!

I really hope to hell Tom gets a new job fast! He’s got to stay away from small companies, too. They not only have a 3-month waiting period, but they want over $40 a week for insurance! What’s the point of having insurance if you still have to pay a fortune anyway?! Gee, something up there really doesn’t want me getting my teeth taken care of, does it? This is getting a little scary. When can I go to a dentist and an ear doctor? When??? In another 4 years?

Other than a pair of Hanes panties, I haven’t won anything else exciting lately.

Tom’s setting up his Mac, then we’ll do mine. The printer, which is wireless, is set up now, too. Hopefully, it won’t take too long or be too much of a bitch learning the new setup and all that. The mouse alone is very different. You don’t click it, you push it.

Jesse switched us over from the ditch to the well, though he says the tank’s not filling as well as he’d like, whatever that means. So we gotta go easy on the water for a while, not do too much laundry at once, etc. Oh, those rural hassles, but it sure beats city life! It’s nice to be able to drink the water again too, and to have cleaner water in the toilet. That ditch water made the toilet pretty yucky and cleaning it was a bitch.

He’s going to finish the porch roof next week because he’s going back to work which I was glad to hear so long as the dogs don’t become a problem. Tom says he thinks someone will be with them and that someone was there today because he was talking on a two-way radio.

It turns out that when we tried to call him, it was the wrong number. So the guy’s not as aloof as we thought he was.

But now the pressure’s on once again to keep a schedule cuz of him having to come down here. Once this well thing is finally working right and the roof’s done, are we going to be able to go more than two weeks without seeing him down here? I sure hope so!

Most importantly, I hope Tom finds another job before they get the chance to force him to take more unpaid days off or go out of business altogether! Last year’s little tragedy has left me so traumatized, and so worried about our security.

I’ve been having fun changing my profile picture every so often. First I had a face shot of myself, then a rat, now a mannequin! Interesting, huh? Maybe a mouse can be next. I change it every couple of weeks or so.

Received more feedback from my loyal fan that was both detailed and insightful. I guess I succeeded in portraying Noelle correctly after all because she described her exactly as I envisioned her to be! Hot, confident, tough, unpredictable and downright scary. A lot of things rolled into one.

I was surprised she thought it was a little long. I always worried it was too short a story. The rest of it will be posted tomorrow, as well as the start of College Romance for which I’ll create a whole new journal. I’ll have a journal for each story, as well as for my daily journal, of course.

Jesse’s coming down to switch us back over to the well tomorrow, and amazingly, I’ll be awake!

Tom has Thursday and Friday off this week. The bad thing is that I worry it’ll hurt our savings, but the good is that we’ll have plenty of new toys to play with during his time off! The printer and one of the computers will be here tomorrow.

Wow, I guess I’m getting to be a more popular Kiwi author. I decided to create another journal and post my last story after all, and I already have a subscriber! She’s 28, bi, living in Nebraska. I thanked her for the nice feedback, wished her luck with her own story, and let her know I’d be posting other stories over multiple days since we only get so much room per entry. I post a synopsis for each story in the journal description.

Had some killer allergies yesterday and a little bit today, too. I can’t imagine what’s causing them. I just hope they let up real soon!

Yesterday morning we went out to pick up the mail and got the Apple cards! We also browsed through Long’s Drug and they had these really beautiful crystals that are ever so dazzlingly shiny! A little pricey for such little gems, but I’ll probably get one someday. Instead, I just got Tempt Me body spray, one of my favorites.

Then, after grabbing a few things from the grocery store, Tom dropped me off and took off a couple of hours later to check the Carmichael box and go to the Apple store in this mall we almost went to when we first moved here. I wouldn’t go in it, though, cuz it was such a zoo. It turned out to be nothing but a waste of time, money and gas. There was nothing but junk at the mail place, and nothing in the Apple store either which took him forever just to get into, it was such a circus.

So this morning he ordered from Apple’s site and got us a color laser printer and a couple of Macs, one refurbished. One Mac will arrive at the end of the week, another next week, then the printer the week after that. While I’m not looking forward to breaking in a new computer and having to configure and reformat things, I’m sick of all the incompatibility problems I’ve been having which will make it worth it. Every time I get an update on something it fucks up or alters something else. But with Macs, everything’s run by the same company so I shouldn’t have so many conflicts with everything being made to work together.

When Tom was browsing through forums online to see what others were saying about Robo and Macs, a few OLSers were bragging about how they’ve won “hundreds” of dollars worth of stuff in the few years they’ve been sweeping, while in the few years I’ve been sweeping I’ve won over 30 grand’s worth. Guess not everyone’s psychic!

I had a dream last night that’s either just a tease like the horse dreams were, or a sign that I’m in for a hell of a surprise to come! I dreamt we were just moving into a place and I had my Barbies spread out all over the floor. Tom came into the room and asked, “So, have you got it all figured out yet?”

I looked up at him, nodded and said, “Yeah, I think I’m going to put 5 on the ledges on top of each window.”

Well, seeing that I have about 60 Barbies, that’d be a hell of a lot of windows! As in a pretty big house, two of which I’m entering sweeps for right now. The odds have got to be astronomical, psychic or not, but I’m doing daily house prayers and spells until the contests end between the end of this month and the middle of next.

Not that I’m complaining, but strangely enough, neither Tom nor I have heard the dogs in about a week now. It’s been in the 90s, but I haven’t even heard them in the middle of the night when it’s cooler. Somehow I doubt Jesse, any more than most Westerners, cared to take them indoors cuz of the smoke, even if there hasn’t been as much of it for a couple of days. I was just out doing laundry and it’s just oh-so peaceful and lovely! I did hear dogs off in the distance, but that’s about it. The only thing dampening how much I love it here is knowing that we don’t own the land and that the winters may be more extreme than I’d like, even if they won’t be as fierce as Oregon or Massachusetts.

Blackie, who I sometimes refer to as the candy striper cuz he loves sweets and has a distinct stripe running down his back, has definitely warmed up to me more than Brownie. All Brownie really likes to do is run around loose in the living room and abuse his freedom by not going home when I tell him to. He only goes home when he feels like it. All my candy striper really wants to do is stay home and eat, though he does shyly come up to me for attention at times. They both still don’t want to be handled.

When Brownie’s out when Tom’s at his computer, he goes up and tugs on his toe occasionally. He does the same thing when he’s lounging on the futon. Now that he’s climbing on that, I don’t let him out when Tom’s sleeping. He used to only run along the wall his cage is on, but now he’s infatuated with the opposite wall. I dragged the cage into the bedroom so he could run around in there, but instead, they just stayed home, played tackle, and stunk up the room. There’s no air cleaner in there.

The smoke out there is a little scary. It seems worse lately yet there still aren’t any fires around here. Tom says it’s horrible in Rocklin. The moon had an eerie amber glow to it last night rather than the usual whitish-gray tones. I usually don’t smell the smoke with the cooler going which has a really good filter as opposed to the one we had in Phoenix, yet I awoke nervous in the middle of my sleep yesterday afternoon because I could smell it. I even got up to look out the window to make sure the haziness hadn’t worsened.

I wonder if my folks, who were always news junkies, are the least bit concerned over how we’re doing and whether or not the fires are affecting us. I guess they must not be or else they’d have written. Just why did they save us last fall anyway? It’s weird, alright. It’s like they don’t not care enough to want to see me dead, but they don’t care enough to stay in touch. I know it’s better this way, though, because it is very important to them (well, to her) that I be just like them, which I can never be. I can only be who I am. I think she’s come to realize that too, and to understand that sending little “Do Not Do or Discuss” lists won’t make me what she wants me to be. At last, she has learned to ignore rather than to try to change or control people - wow! I didn’t think she ever would. I mean, that is if I’m correct in assuming that that’s the reason I haven’t heard from her; because I said too many things in my letters she didn’t want to hear. I can’t think of any other reason and I don’t think I should waste my time trying to figure out just what makes those people tick. Even if I could figure them out, it wouldn’t change a thing.

On the other hand, they’re probably figuring they’re going to hear from me any day now. In my last letter to them which I sent from the motel, I told them I would contact them once we were settled, although it would be a while. But once we got to half a year with no word from them was when I decided to stop writing to those who don’t respond. That includes Paula as well. I sent the new address and phone number, so it’s up to her to call or not to call, although she could very well be in jail. You never know with her.

Yesterday we could hear some hammering and a saw whirring that was definitely coming from in back. It started early in the morning and I assumed Jesse was having the well worked on. He hasn’t been down to hook us back up to the well yet. But hammering and sawing? Why would you need to do that to fix a well or to drill a new one? Although I couldn’t see a thing through the trees, I just hope no one’s building a house back there! If I could hear hammering and saws, then I could certainly hear barking.

We were worried the refrigerator was broken. It failed to come on for a while. Apparently, something got shaken loose, but after Tom moved things around it was fine. That would’ve been the fourth refrigerator in less than a year and a half between the two that crapped out in Oregon, the leaky motel one, and this one!

I reassured Mary that she’ll only be known as “Mary” and nothing about her case will be mentioned in my journals at this time. She says that although she trusts me with her life, her friend Shirley is going to check it out regularly. Great, another fan! As I told her, anyone is invited to check out my writing as well as my photo albums on Webshots. Her friend Nathan is going to send her some of my pictures which is nice. I told her to be sure to describe the ones he sends so I don’t send the same ones in, and yes, I shall be sending some soon! The Apple cards are on their way.

Although they laid off 4 out of 12 people at work, Tom was not one of them. To save the company money, though, he has to take 4 unpaid days off in July, then he gets 4 vacation days in August. I just hope he’s gone by then! Gone to a more secure job with benefits that’s closer to home. Better yet, I wish I could win enough money to not only buy a house outright but to get him out of work for a while! I’d need to win 300K in order to do this. With 100K we wouldn’t have much left over after taxes.

The fires in Big Sur are still out of control and we can smell the smoke even though it’s over 100 miles away.

I thought a loud motor woke me up, but Tom said there wasn’t a sound at all. So now Jesse’s waking me up in my dreams?! Well, I’m sure he will for real tomorrow if the well’s been behaving. Then within 10 days, there’ll be something else. Fortunately, he’s not going to do the deck or the washroom, but he’ll be down to finish the roof before it rains, so in a couple of months. Oh, to be able to go a couple of months without him coming down here! We saw the owners of the Oregon house all of 4 times in the 2 years we were there, but we’ve had to see Jesse a dozen or so times already and we haven’t even been here 3 months yet! Is there something else behind these additions/repairs/problems? Curiosity? Loneliness?

God, please let me win us a house of our own!

Other than that, all is running smoothly enough, but at a rather high temperature. It’s to be over 100º for the next 5 days or more.

My rash has gotten worse, so Tom got a special cream for it that says it’ll clear it up in a few days. It’s itchy as hell! It started on the insides of my ankles, but now it’s crept up most of the length of my calves and there are a few spots on the tops of my feet. We still don’t know what caused it. The way it’s isolated to my lower legs suggests something I came in contact with, but what could I possibly have brushed up against that could do this? I haven’t been traipsing around in the woods or anything. If it were a food allergy or the ditch water, then why just pick on my legs? Wouldn’t it be all over me?

Tom wondered if it could be stress, but if that were the case, you’d think I’d have been plenty plastered from head to toe in the motels. I am a little stressed out, though, because they’re getting ready to go out of business at work. Tom says everything will be ok. That’s what he said when we moved down here, I reminded him, but he assures me that was a totally different situation and that there was nothing to worry about. He says we have enough money saved to get us by for a month or a little more if we were careful. Yeah, but I don’t want to have to be that careful. It’s always the transition period that’s the scariest when you’re hanging in limbo. If we had 5 grand saved, then no, I wouldn’t be nervous. I know it probably wouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks for him to find a job, even if it had to be another shitty-paying one, but still, that’s two weeks, plus another week or two that there’d be no income coming in. Our rent isn’t $450, and we now have to pay a fortune in gas, so even just a few weeks without money coming in is scary at least to me. He says he’s eligible for unemployment, though I can’t believe it could be nearly as much as we’d need.

For $10, Tom’s sending a request off to Arizona for a certified copy of his birth certificate. Hopefully, this won’t take long, and hopefully he’ll stumble across his passport, but I doubt it. I think someone connected to the house stole it if Tom didn’t lose it. He has been losing things and being forgetful a lot lately and it gets old. It really does. He’s always so damn disorganized. He also lost the non-certified copy of his birth certificate. It’s like something up there doesn’t want him having any ID! Like it wants to make getting a job harder for him.

Anyway, I just hope whatever’s up there will care enough to look out for us and protect us from yet another financial crisis. We’ve been reduced to that humiliation enough, and there’d be no one to turn to. My parents have obviously decided they don’t want anything to do with me. The only ones who care about us can’t help us. Tom’s right, this is a different situation. Ah, but one thing still hasn’t changed yet and that’s that we never get to stay long in the few nice, peaceful places we’ve had the blessing of residing in. I fear the risk of losing this place is way up there because of how whatever’s up there hates to see us be where we’re happy. But I will not be thrown back into the city again! Then again, if we couldn’t afford to stay here, we couldn’t afford to go anywhere else. This is pretty much as cheap as it gets around here. This would be a much more comfortable place to kill ourselves if we were faced with homelessness, and no one could interfere, but I really, really hope it doesn’t come to that! Sometimes I don’t know what’s worse, being in the middle of a crisis, or fearing we’re going to be!

I guess our latest mouse visitor decided we weren’t worth coming to visit now that we’ve hidden our food from it, cuz I can’t believe it would miss every single trap that I’ve got set up in here.

In the city it’s firecrackers for July 4th, in the country it’s gunshots! Yeah, we could hear them off in the distance. I just hope we get to stay here longer than a few months to a few years (unless we win enough to buy a house)!

Later…

Another day of disrupted sleep. First my rash, which is finally getting better (I think), woke me up. Then as I was falling back asleep I heard that fucking ATV. The sound reflects off the mountain and makes it seem much louder than it really is. This time the stupid cock had yet another leak and it turned out that he had a valve set wrong. So once again I had to be put out by his stupidity. He had wanted to let us know that if we heard anyone prowling around, it was only him. I guess he filled his tank last night which holds 1500 gallons, then because he had things set up wrong, the water got pushed out of the tank and back down into the ditch. We’re still hooked to the ditch water, but in two days I’ll have to be put out yet again cuz the asshole’s gonna hook us up to the well at that point when it’s had enough recovery time.

I’m so sick of having to see or hear him! We can’t even go two weeks without something going on. It’s still way worth living here for the peace and quiet I get when I am awake, but I wonder if we’ll ever get to go a whole month without him coming down here. I doubt it, though.

We got a kick out of his saying he’s been so worried over the well that he hasn’t been able to sleep. Good. He’s fucking with my sleep so it serves him right to get a taste of his own medicine!

Another thing I’m sick of is the responsibility having to fall on me to get my own prizes. I’m not going to bother fighting for the Karmaloop shopping spree. That one just isn’t worth the effort. But I do intend to fight for those Apple cards.

The good news is that I’m still 142 pounds and have regained a lot of my mobility since leaving the motel. I can once again sit down on the floor in Indian style position with no hands and have lost a lot of the joint soreness I had accumulated from sitting in that damn room. Losing weight and being more active have really helped a lot. Starting tomorrow I’m going to adjust my diet from 1200 calories to 1000 and see if I can lose any more weight. If not, I’ll be ok with staying where I’m at so long as I don’t gain any more. Being fit is more important to me than being skinny.

Although I dreamt the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see more than 25-50 feet away, and that I found his passport, neither has come to be. Instead, we’ve got another mouse to catch, and the pump Jesse had put in the well yesterday still isn’t doing any good. He thinks it’s dried up and that he’ll need to have a new one drilled. Sure enough, Maryann, who I spoke to earlier, said there hasn’t been a problem in years. Figures, huh? The pump was down there for 16 years. In other words, we’re the ones that jinxed the damn thing with the breakage curse that’s been on us forever now. We learned through the burst pipes and fucked up refrigerator in Oregon that just because we don’t own much right now doesn’t keep us safe from things breaking more than they should. The good part is that we don’t have to pay for it, just be inconvenienced. When I spoke to Jesse, who ATV’d down here after speaking with Maryann, he said it’d cost him 15-20 grand to drill a new well.

Yup. Guy’s got money. He definitely isn’t going back to work anytime soon, but if his presence will keep the dogs from going on two-hour barking sprees, then fine.

Because the well problems aren’t his fault, I didn’t ask for a rent deduction for next month. But I did ask about the dump. I explained how hard it’d be to get certain things to the dump because we only have a car and because we have nothing to prove we’re residents of this town yet, and he said something about a free ticket he had and that he’d haul some stuff away next time he went.

Meanwhile, he said to keep the outside faucets turned on all the time. I don’t know why Tom, who called to tell me how to turn them on when I emailed him to let him know there was no water, had them turned off. Guess he must’ve thought he’d be shorting Jesse if they were on all the time.

I’m glad to be dealing with problems such as this as opposed to wild neighbors and ferocious car stereos, but I still hope the well’s fixed soon because we can’t drink this water and it’s kind of yucky.

As far as I know, the well hasn’t been fixed yet and we’re still hooked up to the ditch, showering and all that in ditch water. The dumb cock thinks he’s going to fix it himself, but we’ll see about that! Tom said he says the well’s 400’ deep. That’s halfway to Arizona! I knew it had to be deep being on a mountain and all, cuz the water table just can’t be all that high when you’re on a mountain.

Other than a mysterious rash on the insides of my ankles and a bad allergy attack last night, nothing much is going on. Our throats get scratchy from the smoke and Tom says it’s hazy inside the building where he works, but so far there doesn’t seem to be any threat to us and I hope it stays that way!